“Eat. Sleep. Code. Repeat.’ was printed on everything,” he wrote, adding, “I’d seen the phrase before, but this time it burned into my brain, probably because it was being so actively marketed at a large conference. I literally let out an ‘ugh’ when I saw it.”

Because, the truth is, the underlying idea of that phrase isn’t so cute.

It’s not just another way of saying “I love programming!” It’s part of the not-so-subtle message that programmers are constantly being told that if you really want to make it — if you want to command respect in your profession and be known as a “real programmer” — than you must love programming so much it is literally all you do in your life. And all you want to do.

Kim is a professional Android programmer for a company called Basecamp, which creates project management software.

And he, for one, is sick of that message, writing:

There’s a damaging subtext, and that’s what bothers me. The phrase promotes an unhealthy perspective that programming is an all or nothing endeavour — that to excel at it, you have to go all in. It must be all consuming and the focus of your life. Such bullshit. In fact it’s the exact opposite. … a truly balanced lifestyle — one that gives your brain and your soul some space to breathe non-programming air — actually makes you a better programmer.

To understand just how pervasive this indoctrination is, a couple of months ago, Alex St. John, a famous video game developer and exec, someone who has hired a lot of programmers over the years, caused an uproar when he published a controversial article in VentureBeat.

St. John argued that game programmers that didn’t love to code so much that they were willing to sacrifice themselves for the privilege had a poor attitude and should give their jobs to someone who did love it enough. (St. John called it a “wage slave” attitude.)